The Terrific3 travel blog

We’ve been here 2 weeks and the kids seem to be growing out of all their swim clothes, plus S lost his water bottle, so we decided to make a trip to the mall, as we were told that’s where to go for quality swim clothes…and since they’ll likely be swimming for hours a day for the next 2 months, it seemed reasonable to make an investment.

I generally despise malls, but admittedly was excited to come to this one as a cultural excursion. And it was just fun to do something different and not touristy.

Almost immediately, we arrived and Z was starving, despite a hefty breakfast and many snacks so we headed to the basement food court and the boys had pizza and strawberry smoothies and I had Thai food from this delicious vegan place. The prices here were reasonable—my meal was $2, the kids’ had 3 slices of pizza each for $3, and smoothie was $1.

We then went and bought swim suits and went to an Asian store called Mochi mochi to buy a water bottle. The store was hella cute, hello kitty style, and I bought the boys some toys, hot wheels and a small Lego car each.

Then we kept exploring the mall, passed by the arcade and air hockey (which I promised they could play) and up to the top floor which had the cinema. We discovered that the Spider-Man movie in English (subtitles in Thai) started in 10 minutes, so a few minutes later, for the price of $20 total, we were sitting in their “deluxe” seats, which honestly weren’t necessarily because all the seats looked nicer than most US theaters.

Almost 3 hours later, the promised air hockey game, then some dessert, and a visit to the upscale grocery store Rimping to buy hummus for me and cheese for the kids and mangoes for our house.

Now it’s 5pm and we are headed back to our Airbnb where the boys will have pasta I made earlier this week and I’ll have vegan gyozas and chive and radish cakes I just bought at the mall. It was nice to have a spontaneous and different type of day, and it was definitely a cultural excursion!